Singing Librarian flashback: Preparation Fugue


My second flashback is cheating in some ways, as it’s to an aspect of my most recent show, and I have already discussed it, as it was happening, on an h2g2 discussion thread.  But I think it might be an interesting insight into the joys and woes that go into making the near-impossible seem effortless.

Spring 2006.  The Marlowe Theatre.  Me and My Girl. I played the Hon. Gerald Bolingbroke, an upper-class twit and one of the principal roles.  This involved a number of marvellous costumes and a couple of essential props – a monocle, and an engagement ring.  The poor fool spends most of the show trying to persuade a perfectly awful woman to marry him, so the ring made several appearances, and the monocle had to be worn with all of the costumes, being secreted away in a range of waistcoat or shirt pockets.  Learning how to use a monocle was an entertaining struggle in itself, but I mention it as an aside because it’s vaguely relevant to the scene in question.

The scene is the last one in the first act, the preparation for a grand party (which will soon be interrupted by the famous Lambeth Walk), and the beginning of the scene made us all break out in a cold sweat every time it approached.  The Preparation Fugue.  Continue reading →

2006
08/20
CATEGORY
Musicals
Singing Librarian flashback
Theatre
TAGS

5 comments

Why, there’s a wench!


It can be easy to overlook the fact that texts hundreds of years old can be controversial.  Non-religious texts, that is!  But having seen a production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew this week, in the beautiful grounds of St. Augustine’s Abbey, it would be foolish to pretend this isn’t the case.  You could actually feel the tension in the audience rise as we approached the rather sticky conclusion of the play, particularly the husbands nervously wondering how their wives would react to Katharina’s final speech.  Even if you don’t know the play, you probably know of the speech, particularly this bit:

I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war when they should kneel for peace
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway
When they are bound to serve, love and obey
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
…
Place your hands beneath your husband’s foot,
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease

It’s not really an easy pill to swallow, is it?  ‘Let your husband walk all over you.’  Not a message I’d like to give to anyone.  But of course, it’s not quite so simple.  In theatre, the text is only part of the equation, and whether the dramatist likes it or not, the director, the actors and even (to a lesser, though also more complicated, extent) the audience can have as great an influence on the play’s meaning and tone as the words do.  In this particular case, there are various ways of playing the scene or interpreting the action which make the ending far easier for modern audiences to accept.  Whether you should do so is a different question entirely, which I shall dodge around and leave for others. Continue reading →

2006
08/19
CATEGORY
Theatre
TAGS




10 comments

Still haven’t found what they’re looking for


It seems that it is a rule of blogging to use a post here and there to ponder the many and varied reasons that people choose to visit the blog in question, and it also seems that (having apparently passed 2000 ‘hits’) it is time for the Singing Librarian to ponder this.  Of course, the majority of the people that leave comments here are people that I know from elsewhere, either in that dodgy thing we sometimes call ‘real life’ or from another site, generally h2g2.  However, I know there are others who pass through, either regularly or for a one-off visit, and it’s always intriguing to see what search engine terms have brought the new visitors here.  And most of them will have been rather disappointed, I fear. Continue reading →

2006
08/17
CATEGORY
Meta - about this blog
Ramblings
TAGS



5 comments

52’s first suit


I’m a week behind with the wonderful world of 52, the weekly ‘real-time’ comic I enthused about some time ago.  The rest of the community of crazy comics fans camped outside their local shops last week and picked up Week 14, but the last issue I read was Week 13, meaning that I am exactly one quarter of the way through the series, and at an appropriate point to pause and reflect.  The creative team involved with the series have mentioned that the title has some meaning other than the number of weeks in a year, and the first thing that springs to mind for many people is a deck of cards.  Now, there’s been no sign of the poker-themed villains the Royal Flush Gang thus far, but I did wonder whether one could divide the series into four suits, and if so, which suit the first 13 issues represent.

For me, I think it’s hearts, as quite a number of hearts are broken, in one way or another, in this first ‘suit’.  Continue reading →

2006
08/15
CATEGORY
Books & Comics
TAGS





3 comments

Now we are in-laws


My sister got married at the weekend.  However, other than saying that yes, she looked stunning, yes, it was a fantastic occasion and no, it didn’t rain, I’m not writing this post about the even itself.  It is about a new facet of my identity which perplexes me somewhat.

What is the role of the brother-in-law?

The role of the mother-in-law is very well defined, and the father-in-law almost as much.  But what about the sibling of the newly married man or woman?  We get to add -in-law to our list of titles, which is a privilege denied to uncles, aunts, cousins and so on, but why bother?  If the two of them ever decide to start a family (which is, sadly, fairly unlikely, but I will not apply pressure), then uncledom would be the state entered into, and the role of the uncle is quite clear.  The role of the uncle is to lead the little darlings slightly astray by being crazier than the parents, and also to introduce the wee ones to activities they might otherwise miss as their parents have no particular fondness for a particular sport, craft, genre of film or national cuisine.

But what of the brother-in-law?  I suppose if a sister’s husband started being unpleasant to her, a brother-in-law might step in and say ‘oi!’  But as my sister is more capable of looking out for herself than I am of looking out for her, this doesn’t apply in our case.  And her husband is a very nice, gentle man (as well as a gentleman, I suppose) and I’d be shocked if the issue ever arose.  The only other thing I can think of is that the brother- or sister-in-law is the in-law who you don’t have to put on any airs for, who you don’t have to try to impress.  The in-law who you feel comfortable with and who won’t over-criticise the standard of your cleaning, cooking or DIY.  The good cop to the mother-in-law bad cop.  Hopefully, given time, the friend.

2006
08/14
CATEGORY
Ramblings
TAGS


6 comments

Messing around


In my post a few days ago about my experiences as a cast member of Die Fledermaus (goodness me, that sounds pretentious!), I mentioned the silliness which we got up to behind the scenes during Act One.  Silliness is often an important, or at least prominent, part of the rehearsal and performance process, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression on this.  There are definitely limits, and when it comes to these limits, I am a bit of an ogre.

Under no circumstances should you do anything to jeopardise any aspect of the show.

Never ever.  Not even a little bit.  Backstage pranks are good.  Enjoying yourself on stage is good.  You do need to do something to pass the time when you’re not on stage.  But this should never affect your performance or the performance of anyone else.  The audience has paid good money to see the show, and (unless it’s a pantomime), they don’t want to see people trying to make each other laugh, or inappropriate comedy props appearing on the stage.  ‘In jokes’ mean nothing to the paying punters and often aren’t even funny to those in the know.

Let me give you an example.  A real one.  Continue reading →

2006
08/08
CATEGORY
Theatre
TAGS



5 comments

Boundaries of ignorance


The further you progress in the education system, the more you realise that there’s an awful lot you don’t know.  My MA in English Literature means I know a bit about the field in general, quite a lot about eighteenth-century novels and far too much about Henry Fielding.  But it also makes me realise how much there is about even my chosen fields that I don’t know.  Higher degrees mean learning more and more about less and less, but would I really want to study dozens of GCSE or A Level subjects and be frustrated, knowing that I had now scratched the surface of an awful lot of things?

A post elsewhere on WordPress really challenged me to think again about how little I know.  Continue reading →

2006
08/07
CATEGORY
Christianity
Education
Library
Ramblings
TAGS



13 comments

More summer singing


Tonight I sang at another summer concert, with many of the same people as last time, and with a similar selection of music.  This one was to raise money for one of those wonderful small village churches that pepper the English countryside, and I can vouch that it’s worth saving, as the church was our concert venue.  The audience was a few dozen local people, filling the pews.  I’m not sure whether it was the acoustics of the building or our collective frame of mind, but we sang better than we ever have before.  Continue reading →

2006
08/05
CATEGORY
Singing
TAGS
1 comment

It must be summer…


Things can get rather silly in the Library of Doom.  It’s probably a reflex action that helps us cope, making us laugh instead of scream.  The silliness tends to be most obvious over the summer, as there are very few students in (so you can get away with more) and other than stock management, there’s not all that much to do.

So it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when I bounded out enthusiastically for a session on the issue desk (one hour, serving approximately ten students) and was handed an origami boat.  Continue reading →

2006
08/04
CATEGORY
Library
TAGS

6 comments

Singing Librarian flashback: Die Fledermaus


I recently added a page to the blog on my on stage exploits, and thought I’d use occasional posts to peel back the curtains and give you a peek at backstage life as I’ve experienced it during some of these productions.   Sometimes the things the audience doesn’t see can be just as interesting as the things they do see.  So let’s begin…

Summer 2002.  The Gulbenkian Theatre.  Die Fledermaus, with a cast consisting of a mixture of professionals and local singers.  I won’t explain the plot, as it would take far too long to go into the multitudinous twists and turns, but it’s a silly tale of multiple mistaken identities, most of them deliberate.  We set it in the swinging sixties in New York City, which meant that the pivotal party had guests ranging from Andy Warhol to a guitar-toting hippie (me).  I present to you three scenes from the University of Kent Summer Opera production of Die Fledermaus. Continue reading →

2006
08/03
CATEGORY
Opera
Operetta
Singing Librarian flashback
Theatre
TAGS



3 comments